2018 | CompuScoop.com

Apple and Verizon announce special deal for Apple Music

CompuScoop Staff August 9, 2018 1

Yesterday, Apple and Verizon announced for its unlimited customers, that they can sign up for Apple Music for the next six months free.

Starting on Thursday, August 16, both new and existing customers who have one of Verizon's Unlimited wireless plans can access a special offer for six months of Apple Music at no cost. Following this period, the subscription will be priced at $9.99 per month, the standard cost for an Apple Music subscription.

This is available to both new and existing Apple Music subscribers. According to Verizon, current Apple Music subscribers will get the same six months of free service as new subscribers, but will be required to cancel and reactivate their Apple Music subscriptions.

Verizon says that once registered, its VZW Unlimited customers will have full access to Apple Music on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, Mac, HomePod, CarPlay, PC, and Android devices.

"This first-of-its-kind offer is just the first step in an exclusive partnership with Apple," said Angie Klein, vice president of marketing, Verizon. "It gives our customers exactly what they want: Apple's best-in-class music streaming experience, paired with an unlimited plan tailored to them, on the network they deserve. And now that you can mix and match our unlimited plans, every person in your family can stream worry-free on the unlimited plan they need, without paying for things they don't - and enjoy all the music they want for six months free with Apple Music with this exclusive offer in the U.S."

Apple normally offers new subscribers three months of free access to Apple Music, so this is double the normal trial period.

Verizon offers three unlimited plans, priced starting at $75 for a single line. All plans offer unlimited text, talk, and LTE data, but offer varying video quality and mobile hotspot limits.

The cheapest Go Unlimited plan includes 480p video streaming and unlimited mobile hotspot access at 600kb/s. The middle tier Beyond Unlimited Plan offers 720p video streaming and 15GB of LTE hotspot data, while the higher-end plan offers up 720p video streaming, 20GB of LTE hotspot data, and other perks like Mexico and Canada Text and Data, and five TravelPasses per month.

Verizon's cheapest plan offers unlimited LTE data, but warns that customers could be throttled at times of peak usage. The Beyond Unlimited plan lets customers use 22GB of LTE data before throttling, while the Above Unlimited plan provides customers with 75GB of unlimited LTE data before throttling kicks in at times of peak congestion.

Verizon will be providing more information about the partnership with Apple Music on its website on August 16.

Amazon.com has over 200 Disney Movies for sale

Dan Uff August 8, 2018 0

Amazon.com is putting virtually all Disney videos on sales from anywhere between $3.00 to $13.00 each.

This deal includes titles such as Disney’s The Shaggy Sog with Tim Allen, Alice in Wonderland, and more.

To see the videos and to take advantage of the deal, click here.

(Video): Apple (again) Promoting being Paid via iMessage and Apple Pay

Dan Uff August 8, 2018 0

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtbA5grOJa4&w=560&h=315]

Parker Solar Probe: Humanity’s First Visit to a Star

NASA Gov August 8, 2018 2

NASA's historic Parker Solar Probe mission will revolutionize our understanding of the Sun, where changing conditions can propagate out into the solar system, affecting Earth and other worlds. Parker Solar Probe will travel through the Sun’s atmosphere, closer to the surface than any spacecraft before it, facing brutal heat and radiation conditions — and ultimately providing humanity with the closest-ever observations of a star.

Journey to the Sun

Launch Period: July 31 – Aug. 23, 2018

Launch Site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida

Launch Vehicle: Delta IV-Heavy with Upper Stage

In order to unlock the mysteries of the Sun's atmosphere, Parker Solar Probe will use Venus’ gravity during seven flybys over nearly seven years to gradually bring its orbit closer to the Sun. The spacecraft will fly through the Sun’s atmosphere as close as 3.8 million miles to our star’s surface, well within the orbit of Mercury and more than seven times closer than any spacecraft has come before. (Earth’s average distance to the Sun is 93 million miles.)

Flying into the outermost part of the Sun's atmosphere, known as the corona, for the first time, Parker Solar Probe will employ a combination of in situ measurements and imaging to revolutionize our understanding of the corona and expand our knowledge of the origin and evolution of the solar wind. It will also make critical contributions to our ability to forecast changes in Earth's space environment that affect life and technology on Earth.

Extreme Exploration

At closest approach, Parker Solar Probe hurtles around the Sun at approximately 430,000 mph (700,000 kph). That's fast enough to get from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., in one second.

At closest approach to the Sun, the front of Parker Solar Probe's solar shield faces temperatures approaching 2,500 F (1,377 C). The spacecraft's payload will be near room temperature.

On the final three orbits, Parker Solar Probe flies to within 3.8 million miles of the Sun's surface — more than seven times closer than the current record-holder for a close solar pass, the Helios 2 spacecraft, which came within 27 million miles in 1976, and about a tenth as close as Mercury, which is, on average, about 36 million miles from the Sun.

Parker Solar Probe will perform its scientific investigations in a hazardous region of intense heat and solar radiation. The spacecraft will fly close enough to the Sun to watch the solar wind speed up from subsonic to supersonic, and it will fly though the birthplace of the highest-energy solar particles.

To perform these unprecedented investigations, the spacecraft and instruments will be protected from the Sun’s heat by a 4.5-inch-thick (11.43 cm) carbon-composite shield, which will need to withstand temperatures outside the spacecraft that reach nearly 2,500 F (1,377 C).

The Science of the Sun

The primary science goals for the mission are to trace how energy and heat move through the solar corona and to explore what accelerates the solar wind as well as solar energetic particles. Scientists have sought these answers for more than 60 years, but the investigation requires sending a probe right through the 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit heat of the corona. Today, this is finally possible with cutting-edge thermal engineering advances that can protect the mission on its dangerous journey. Parker Solar Probe will carry four instrument suites designed to study magnetic fields, plasma and energetic particles, and image the solar wind.

Teaming for Success

Parker Solar Probe is part of NASA’s Living With a Star program to explore aspects of the Sun-Earth system that directly affect life and society. The Living With a Star flight program is managed by the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, manages the mission for NASA. APL is designing and building the spacecraft and will also operate it.

Why do we study the Sun and the solar wind?

The Sun is the only star we can study up close. By studying this star we live with, we learn more about stars throughout the universe.
The Sun is a source of light and heat for life on Earth. The more we know about it, the more we can understand how life on Earth developed.
The Sun also affects Earth in less familiar ways. It is the source of the solar wind; a flow of ionized gases from the Sun that streams past Earth at speeds of more than 500 km per second (a million miles per hour).
Disturbances in the solar wind shake Earth's magnetic field and pump energy into the radiation belts, part of a set of changes in near-Earth space known as space weather.
Space weather can change the orbits of satellites, shorten their lifetimes, or interfere with onboard electronics. The more we learn about what causes space weather – and how to predict it – the more we can protect the satellites we depend on.
The solar wind also fills up much of the solar system, dominating the space environment far past Earth. As we send spacecraft and astronauts further and further from home, we must understand this space environment just as early seafarers needed to understand the ocean.